The Rayside-Balfour Canadians potentially filled a couple of big holes last week, both half literally and figuratively.
The local NOJHL (Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League) franchise inked hulking blueliner Ethan Lavallee and not-quite-so-hulking netminder Mackenzie Savard to cards as the team opened their 2017-2018 training camp.
That is the long and the short of the week that was with the Canadians.
A 6-7 defenceman who was nabbed in the fourth round of the 2016 OHL Entry Draft by the Sarnia Sting, Lavallee spent the 2016-2017 campaign with the Sudbury Nickel Capital Wolves, racking up 13 goals and 21 assists in 32 games.
His signing with Rayside will be inconsequential if he manages to crack the Sarnia roster, which certainly is within the realm of realistic goals for the product of the Nickel City Hockey Association.
The signing of Savard, by contrast, is anything but inconsequential. The Dowling native benefits from a smattering of OHL experience, both with the Niagara Ice Dogs and the Sudbury Wolves.
More importantly, he has already proven himself to be a legitimate top-end goaltender in the NOJHL, following up his breakout 2015-2016 season in Rayside (3.21 GAA; .912 save percentage) with some gaudy numbers early last year (2.11 GAA; .944 save percentage), before being traded.
His acquisition immediately solidifies the netminding picture, as Savard is expected to team with freshman Matty Mayhew, the former Nickel Caps goalie who posted a 2.54 goals against average with the Sudbury midgets last year before missing the final few months with an injury.
The two signings marked the only big news out of the three day stretch, this week, where the Canadians took to the ice at the Gerry McCrory Sports Complex.
"I think right now, I'm working on getting a general feeling for what we have here," said coach Dave Clancy. "We have a good nucleus coming back from last year. We have a lot of kids going out to OHL camps, but we believe most of them will be back."
That said, Clancy has been around long enough to know that he's not likely to maintain numbers simply for the sake of numbers at this critical time of the year.
"I'm not the type of guy that is going to hold kids if we don't think they can play at this level," he said. "We'll wait for some players to fall back to us and go from there. But if a player comes in here and works his tail off and earns a spot, I'll sign him tomorrow. If I'm unsure, then it takes a little while to play out."
As for the wish list that Clancy has assembled heading into the new season, there are some items that he believes are more achievable than others.
"We want our ‘D’ moving the puck up ice quicker, being able to skate it out of trouble," he said. "We were a big, strong team last year, a hard team to play against, but we also got hemmed in a lot more than I would like to. We would love to find natural goal scorers, obviously, but they're hard to get. A No. 1 quarterback on defence — hard to find.
"I think we're going to upgrade our scoring this year," Clancy added. "We've got a young player in (Jake) Patridge who put up some good numbers in minor midgets, and James White put up some nice numbers as well."
Rayside-Balfour kicked off exhibition play over the weekend, facing the French River Rapids in Noelville. The regular season kicks off on Sept. 8 as the Canadians entertain the Elliot Lake Wildcats, before playing their next seven games on the road.
